Thomas Orestes Meeks, Jr.
March 19, 1928 to May 28, 2011

Tom Meeks, the ever-proper African American gentleman, as a child was nicknamed the “Preacher” because of his conciliatory ways and his effort to bring harmony into his surroundings.  Early in his life, he was identified as having an extraordinary mind.  Indeed these intuitive feelings of his mental gifts were fulfilled when he received BS, MS and PhD degrees in physics and became a college professor in the CUNY system at Kingsborough Community College, one of the highest rated Community Colleges for math and science in the United States.

Tom was born in Kansas City, Kansas;  he lived the first eight years of his life with his maternal grandparents, Lillie and Henry Wilson and his little sister, Elaine.  The Wilson home was very humble: three rooms with no central heating, electricity or indoor plumbing. There were chickens in the yard, and a garden of fruits and vegetables.  Grandfather Henry worked in a wholesale produce market in Missouri and would bring home fruits and vegetables to share with neighbors.  Grandmother Lillie canned jams and jellies.  Though the depression was on, there was never hunger in the Wilson household. Thomas’ mother, while separated from her husband, worked as a live-in domestic for a family in Missouri. His father, at that time, was a long-distance driver moving from coast to coast, seldom seeing his two children.

How did Tom move from this environment to that of a highly respected college professor?

Education was important to the Meeks family.  Mickey was adopted and started working fulltime at the age of 16; his wife Leah was just two generations past slavery. Her grandmother, who lived in Missouri, had been a slave. Every summer Thomas and Elaine visited their great grandmother Annie Taylor on her farm and saw how hard her life was.  Neither she nor her daughter, Thomas’ and Elaine’s grandmother Lillie, could read or write; education was important.

When Tomas was about three or four years old, the unexpected, the unplanned stepped into his life: the family Leah worked for moved to New York City.  His mother went with the family to continue her employment, sending money to her parents to help with the care of Tom and his sister.  As the father Mickey moved back and forth across the United States, he contacted his wife and eventually they renewed their marriage and set up housekeeping in Harlem, on 133rd Street between Amsterdam and Broadway.  They selected their home to allow their children to go to a good school: PS 193, a small elementary school housed in the same building as Music and Art High School.

Tom’s life was opened to much that was new and exciting. He attended the Harlem YMCA and learned to swim and box.  He went to Carnegie Hall on Saturdays for their children’s classical music concerts. Tom began learning to play the violin at PS 193.  Where he and his family lived, for the first time he was exposed to other ethnic and racial groups.  Some of his classmates were children of doctors, lawyers and other professionals.  A new world had opened up for him; he flourished in it. Upon graduating from PS 193 with honors, he entered a high school for the academically gifted, Stuyvesant High School, known for its excellence in math and science.  Fewer than five of the students at Stuyvesant were African American.  Something in Thomas Meeks pushed him to absorb as much learning as passed before him, pushed him to excel. He moved on from Stuyvesant and was admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he became the first African American graduate.  He earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics at the age of 19, the same year his sister was graduating from high school.  From there he moved on to Yale and then to the Polytechnic University of New York, earning a Masters and then a PhD in physics.

Though he never married and never had children, he contributed to the development and learning of many young adults during his many years as an associate professor at Kingsborough Community College.

This is the story of a remarkable man, born in extreme poverty, third generation past slavery, with functionally illiterate grandparents, parents with limited education who had hopes and goals for their children and instilled in them the desire to excel.  Thomas more than met their expectations.

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Contributions to Thomas Meeks’ memory may be directed to MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 or to the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn’s Health Ministry Committee, 124 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY.

See also the NY Times notice at http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=thomas-o-meeks&pid=151449499

In memory of Tom,
 a poem by neighbor and fellow cooperator Geri Dyer


Ultimate Moments
by Geri Dyer

The organ prelude echoes dolorously

Triumphant, reaching an aura sublime,

Beyond man’s earthly dream as clouds appear

Adorned by lightning and clapping thunder,

To reveal the ultimate pristine beauty

Imbedded in the deep solitude or

Inner tranquil peace, the Revelation,